Modes of suicide in the East and West

My students were miserable and complained about having no ideas to write about for their reflective journals. To help them reflect on elderly care issues, I taught them to use newspapers to identify possible topics.

I started searching for news clips in the papers. Within a day, there were six different news items about older people. One was about a couple leaving a baby in a pram in a mall. After failing to locate the parents for more than an hour, the security staff reported the incident to the police. Eventually, the couple—husband, age 67, and wife, 28—got their baby back from the police station. Next, a senior was knocked unconscious by a vehicle. Third, a fire in a nursing home warranted emergency evacuation of its residents. Then, there was a senior who got drunk and injured himself. Last, two elderly people with chronic illness—a man and a woman—jumped to their deaths.

Common means that elderly people resort to when ending their lives in Hong Kong include jumping from a height, hanging and burning charcoal in a closed room, resulting in death from carbon monoxide poisoning. These methods of suicide are somewhat culture-specific. With space at a premium and the majority of our population living in high-rise apartments—and I mean more than 20 floors and sometimes as many as 60 or 70—choosing to jump as a suicide method is probably out of convenience and ease of availability. Of course, in the West, hanging is also a way to commit suicide, but it is more common among the Chinese. Burning charcoal is becoming more common but, in the past, hanging has been a popular choice.

I wasn’t aware of the cultural difference until I was studying at the University of Toronto and a classmate asked me about it. She was curious and concerned as to why older Chinese people she had come across at work had resorted to ending their lives by such a drastic act as hanging. She was a social worker, you see. At that moment, I became aware that something I had thought was ordinary was, in fact, not so in another culture.

To us Chinese, or at least Hong Kong Chinese, there is nothing drastic about death by hanging. We have learnt about this method of committing suicide since we were small. We watched it in movies and traditional Chinese operas. Whenever a hero or heroine (usually a heroine) in a tragedy wanted to commit suicide, he or she would throw a string or a piece of long cloth through the main wooden frame that held the house together, tie a knot, climb onto a chair and finish the business.

Mostly, these were scenes created for the drama. Sometimes, they were about a heroine fighting against a family that forced her to marry into riches and fame and forget about the guy she loved. Also in these films, if the emperor wanted one of his concubines to die, he would order his officers to throw a long piece of silk cloth at her. Traditional Chinese movies are not graphic at all. So now you can see why killing oneself by hanging is not seen as something drastic in the Chinese population.

I found this revelation quite interesting (not that suicide attempts are interesting, but that observing the differences is). People in different cultures differ not only in how they live their lives, but also in the ways they choose to die.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

About mental space

As an academic, I write a lot. I write research papers, discussion papers, speeches, funding proposals, program documents, consultation reports and so on and so forth. So I am not new to being a “writer.” After starting this blog, however, I have been introduced to one of the worlds of a writer that I had not thought about.

I have not been up close and personal with people I do not know. Such particulars about myself, I typically only share with friends and close acquaintances. I know to whom I have spoken and why I would have told them about myself. But I feel strange knowing that someone about whom I know nothing can come to know my intimate thoughts and feelings. I need time to get over this.

I already know about cultural differences from back in my student days, when I was in England learning to become a midwife (studies I never put into practice, as you are probably aware, if you’ve been following my blog). It was my first trip away from home and, therefore, the biggest culture shock I ever experienced. I was somewhat taken aback that people would share their life stories with strangers they met on the street, or in places such as train and bus stations. I didn’t think—and still don’t think—that a regular Joe or Jane in the Chinese population would do something like this. It is not about whether readiness to share details of one’s life with strangers is good or bad. It is just that there are cultural differences with regard to how we relate to other people.

I thought the British were more reserved, but my first-hand experience as a student midwife in England told me otherwise. Chinese people are more “reserved” with strangers. And it is not just about keeping “face.” As I become more exposed to the world outside my hometown, I am coming to realize that there is, indeed, such a thing as “national characteristics.” Sometimes, it may be an over-generalization but, at other times, you will notice similarities and differences between cultures. Well, with modernization and globalization, we are behaving a lot more like each other, no matter whether we live in the East or the West.

Back to my musings about writing a blog. So this is what a blogger will have to come to accept, that there will be people who know his or her personal particulars and innermost thoughts, even though the writer doesn’t know those people at all. To me, it takes a person who is very comfortable with him or herself to be a blogger. Then again, maybe not. I am new to the experience.

I start analyzing why I don’t feel secure having people I don’t know knowing about me. I ask myself why I don’t readily give the URL for my blog to students and acquaintances. I think it is because I have been a rather private person all along, and I am one of those who need a lot of space between other people and myself, including those I love or am fond of.

Yet again, this is a lesson for me to learn. Why not take it easy? Why not accept it as it is? We are, after all, living in the age of the Internet. As I reflect on this, I realize there is a fundamental difference between me and those who have no reservations whatsoever about making friends over the Internet, who incorporate the cyber world as an integral part of their regular world.

Maybe I can further contemplate this idea and use it to help me better appreciate the differences between Generations X, Y and Z. After all, there is no better way to learn something than firsthand.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.